Consider the best sellers written by Stephen Hawking who at times
comes close to Tom Bearden for straining scientific credibility in his
pop level publications. Similarly, the works of Gerard K. O'Neill.

"Gordon D. Pusch" <gdpusch@NO.xnet.SPAM.com> wrote in message
news:gik79hmlze.fsf@pusch.xnet.com...

Steven Milloy has a weekly "Junk Science" column at

<http://www.foxnews.com/junkscience/>,

but it is mostly directed toward lampooning "Politically Motivated

Science,"

AKA "Science In The Public Interest," wherein the policy wonks of this,

that,

or the other Activist Organization have already decided what the

Politically

Correct conclusion of a study or experiment MUST be, and accumulate

evidence

that allegedly supports said conclusion --- often at taxpayer expense...

It's much more American to get Fox News's conclusion.

Or is that "more Australian"?

BTW, did you see how well Fox squelched Al Frankens' new book? After Fox
filed suit, the book went to #1 on Amazon's bestseller list, and it doesn't
come out for another month. Rupert, I'm sure Al thanks you.

Eric Prebys <prebys@fnal.gov> writes:

Gordon D. Pusch wrote:

Steven Milloy has a weekly "Junk Science" column at
<http://www.foxnews.com/junkscience/>,
but it is mostly directed toward lampooning "Politically Motivated
Science,"
AKA "Science In The Public Interest," wherein the policy wonks of this, that,
or the other Activist Organization have already decided what the Politically
Correct conclusion of a study or experiment MUST be, and accumulate
evidence that allegedly supports said conclusion --- often at taxpayer
expense...

There's some entertaining stuff there, but of course by carefully
choosing which "junk science" he exposes, he's pushing a pretty
strong agenda of his own. It's a fairly recent column, but reading
through the archives, I can't help but wonder what his reaction would
have been to the first studies showing that, say, cigarettes cause
cancer, or the dangers of beryllium dust, for example.

Frankly, I have similar concerns; there are times when Milloy seems
=TOO= skeptical. OTOH, as Millory himself notes, some of his extreme
skepticism has been brought on by the number of times later studies
(usually with bad statistics) have "reversed" the results of earlier
studies (with even worse statistics).

Milloy epitomizes the large and growing sector of "John Q. Public"
who does =NOT= understand how the scientific method works, or that
=ALL= scientific results are TENTATIVE and potentially subject to
later refutation or revision by better evidence, and who has heard
SO many contradictory reports from so many alleged "experts," that
he now refuses to believe =ANYTHING= that =ANY= 'scientific expert"
tells him, no matter =HOW= solid the evidence for the new claim is.

Milloy has a quite valid point that "scientists" (including the bad ones)
have become the "new priests and shamans" of our culture, and that the state
is now relying on "scientific results" that are _SOMETIMES_ almost as bogus
as the entrail reading performed by the traditional priests and shamans.
And unfortunately for the legitimate, careful, cautious scientists
who practice the proper self-skeptical, self-correcting scientific method,
the politically motivated pseudo-scientists have caused people like Milloy
to tar =ALL= scientists with the same brush... :-(

Milloy has a quite valid point that "scientists" (including the bad ones)
have become the "new priests and shamans" of our culture, and that the state
is now relying on "scientific results" that are _SOMETIMES_ almost as bogus
as the entrail reading performed by the traditional priests and shamans.
And unfortunately for the legitimate, careful, cautious scientists
who practice the proper self-skeptical, self-correcting scientific method,
the politically motivated pseudo-scientists have caused people like Milloy
to tar =ALL= scientists with the same brush... :-(

Eric Prebys wrote:

I must say, I've had some fun over the past week or so "educating" myself
about the kook science "establishment" (Tom Bearden, Andrija Puharich,
Glen Rein, Moray King, etc...) and their through-the-looking-glass world
of perpetual motion machines, quaternions, scalar waves, non-Hertzian E&M
and the like. It leads me to ask if anyone knows of any books about this -
something like Randi's "Flim Flam" or Donna Kossy's "Kooks", but focused on
junk science. Even some good web sites would be nice. Any suggestions?

For my part, I'll pass on a great web site I stumbled on about the history
of perpetual motion machines dating back to the 13th century:
http://www.phact.org/e/dennis4.html

I don't know if it's what you have in mind, but I really like the book
"The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl
Sagan.